1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, such as a digital camera, and more particularly to an imaging apparatus equipped with a strobe light, and a control method for controlling the luminous energy of the strobe light.
2. Description of the Related Art
Imaging apparatuses, such as digital cameras, are equipped with a strobe light. Strobe lights are designed to emit light in synchronism with the shutter to adjust the degree of exposure during photography, and are also called flashes.
There is a known method for controlling the luminous energy of a strobe light during photography. In this method, strobe light converges on a subject, the light reflected from the subject is received by a sensor, and when the integrated value of the reflected light reaches a preset value, the emission operation of the strobe light is stopped.
Further, to reduce the number of required components, size, etc., strobe lights widely employ a through-the-lens (TTL) pre-emission method. In this method, pre-emission using predetermined luminous energy is performed on a subject, thereby detecting the brightness of the subject using an image pickup element. Based on the detected brightness, the luminous energy for photography is determined.
The pre-emission method includes a method for determining the luminous energy for photography by one-time pre-emission operation, and a method for determining the same by repeating the pre-emission operation several times. Furthermore, the applicant, for example, has proposed a method for determining appropriate luminous energy from double pre-emission operations in which the luminous energy is varied (see Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-319255).